f the floor, which was tiled,
and in the middle of the carpet a small square table with flap-sides. On
this table was a full-rigged ship on a stormy sea in a glass box, some
resin, a large stone bottle of ink, a ready reckoner, Whitaker's
Almanack (paper edition), a foot-rule, and a bright brass candlestick.
Above the table there hung from the ceiling a string with a ball of
fringed paper, designed for the amusement of flies. At the window was a
flat desk, on which were transacted the affairs of Mr. Ollerenshaw. When
he stationed himself at it in the seat of custom and of judgment,
defaulting tenants, twirling caps or twisting aprons, had a fine view of
the left side of his face. He usually talked to them while staring out
of the window. Before this desk was a Windsor chair. There were eight
other Windsor chairs in the room--Helen was sitting on one that had not
been sat upon for years and years--a teeming but idle population of
chairs. A horsehair arm-chair seemed to be the sultan of the seraglio of
chairs. Opposite the window a modern sideboard, which might have cost
two-nineteen-six when new, completed the tale of furniture. The general
impression was one of fulness; the low ceiling, and the immense harvest
of overblown blue roses which climbed luxuriantly up the walls,
intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass
ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the
brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of
bird's-eye maple, with rounded corners, reflected Helen's hat.

Helen abandoned the Windsor chair and tried the arm-chair, and then
stood up.

"Which chair do you recommend?" she asked, nicely.

"Bless ye, child! I never sit here, except at th' desk. I sit in the
kitchen."

A peculiarity of houses in the Five Towns is that rooms are seldom
called by their right names. It is a point of honour, among the
self-respecting and industrious classes, to prepare a room elaborately
for a certain purpose, and then not to use it for that purpose. Thus
James Ollerenshaw's sitting-room, though surely few apartments could
show more facilities than it showed for sitting, was not used as a
sitting-room, but as an office. The kitchen, though it contained a
range, was not used as a kitchen, but as a sitting-room. The scullery,
though it had no range, was filled with a gas cooking-stove and used as
a kitchen. And the back yard was used as a scullery. This arrangeme